Turn silver into gold…

Time and Tide Fine Art, 4 Market Street, Ipswich

presents

Asha Night

on October 27

6-9 pm

Sue Clark will present her full collection of handcrafted silver and stone bead jewelry. Asha Designs uses all the proceeds from the sale of jewelry to support education in South Sudan. Call Kristina Brendel at 978 238 8848 for more information.

Time & Tide Teams with Asha Designs to Support Sudan

On Wednesday, October 27, you have an opportunity to turn silver into gold.

If you buy a piece of sterling silver jewelry at Time & Tide Fine Art, 4 Market Street, you will be helping a child in Sudan get something truly precious: an education.

“The first person I thought about when I began the process of opening Time & Tide was Susie Clark, the jeweler behind Asha Designs,” says Kristina Brendel. “We had been friends back when we both lived in Arizona. Both of us moved to New England, and both of us have found ourselves involved in humanitarian work overseas.”

Clark’s passion is for the people of South Sudan, and specifically the children of the villages of Yambio and Baguga. She first visited Sudan on a mission trip with her church (Our Savior Lutheran Church in Topsfield) in 2007 — “an amazing adventure,” Clark calls it, “that changed my life.”

Sudan suffered 23 years of brutal civil war, which destroyed “all the basics of life,” she says: electricity, running water, roads, and more. Now life is slowly returning to something like “normal,” but the needs of the children are enormous. Clark witnessed the need firsthand, and decided to do something about them.

“I decided that I could put my jewelry designing skills to use to benefit those kids, and Asha Designs was born,” explains Clark. “Asha is Arabic for hope. In the past 4 years I’ve raised over $20,000 selling my work. We’ve been able to help start classroom buildings and provide teachers’ salaries, affecting the lives of over 500 children. I’ve also been able to sponsor a young man, Benjamin Ibako, by paying for his university tuition.

“I knew when I decided to travel to Southern Sudan I would see things that would disturb my suburban American heart, that I would live for 2 weeks far outside my comfort zone, that I would be a ‘visitor’ among these faces, so different than mine. What I didn’t expect was to have these people crawl into my heart and change me so deeply; that I would feel that I personally could do some small things that could impact some of the lives of that beautiful land. I pray that their names, faces, and stories will never allow me to slide back into complacency, that the songs of the children will haunt me until I become part of the balm that heals Southern Sudan. ”

Starting with a simple tribal spiral earring design, the Asha line has expanded to include semi-precious stone and sterling silver beads. Asha’s designs were previously only available at church events and online; Time & Tide was their first public retail venue. Asha has been very popular with Ipswich residents and tourists alike.

On Wednesday, October 27, from 6-10 pm, Clark will present an expanded selection of her work at discounted prices in the Time & Tide gallery. All proceeds from the evening will go directly to the work in Sudan.

“When you buy jewelry by Asha Designs (named for a beautiful young woman who I met while there),” Clark says, “you will be helping to change the lives of these beautiful children. They will be the future doctors, teachers and leaders of this beautiful, wounded land.”